POLICY BYTES: Hillary Clinton makes more in one speech than most CEOs in a year

Published 7:10 am, Tuesday, April 28, 2015

INSTITUTE FOR POLICY INNOVATION

We all need to thank presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for demonstrating the extreme difference between what CEOs make and…her speaking fees.

Hillary keeps repeating the canard that “CEOs earn 300 times more than a typical American worker,” as she did in the Des Moines Register on Sunday.

But it turns out you have to parse everything she says, just as we have had to do for the past six years under the Obama White House.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last year that there were 246,240 CEOs and that the mean annual wage was $180,700—less than Clinton gets for one speech.

To be sure, that’s a good income, but it’s only a little more than four times the $44,720 median full-time income for men, according to the BLS.

And there’s another way to look at it. Those CEO salaries were for the year, about $86.88 per hour. Hillary can get between $200,000 and $300,000 for a speech that takes about an hour. Even if we include travel time, Clinton makes a lot more than the median CEO.

In short, she is trying to create a campaign issue and hope that no one notices her hypocrisy.

Of course, it’s true that some CEOs make fabulous incomes, but most of them are also creating huge value for the economy by employing people, building or buying new plants and equipment, and making and selling products and services. It’s a little less clear what economic benefit the country is getting from the fabulous, far-above-the-median-income haul that Hillary has been taking in.

To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with former presidents or cabinet secretaries giving speeches for large fees, assuming that they aren’t pay-for-access or quid-pro-quo agreements—an assumption that can never be taken for granted with the Clintons. But most of those high earners don’t go around feigning poverty.

History has seen a long list of political demagogues who talk about the evils of capitalism and helping the poor while living in the lap of luxury—and picking taxpayers’ pockets to stuff their own. So far, Hillary sounds a lot like them.

Today's PolicyByte was written by Dr. Merrill Matthews, resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation.